Resources from Planet Drum
Peter Berg, our founder and a man who touched many lives.
The Eco-Art Contest for high school students
Library of Writings from Planet Drum
“Best of Planet Drum” series
One of our old friends took a look at an early incarnation of this web and commented, “What you need now is a ‘Best of Planet Drum’ section, with reprints of all those pieces we cherished for years (and still do).”
So here are some of our best articles, which inspired many of us to get involved in bioregional groups in the first place. If you have any suggestions of what you’d like to see added here, please contact us by emailing mail@planetdrum.org .
Planet Drum Foundation: An Overview provides a summary our history and a look at our diverse programs over the decades, including our pathbreaking bioregional bundles, the Green City Project, and the Eco-Ecuador project in Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador.
Planet Drum Bundles: Planet Drum Foundation’s earliest publications were “Bundles”—unbound collections of essays, maps, journals and other forms of expression, often about particular bioregions, contained in an envelope. Wherever the Bundles were assembled, they became authentic tools for building bioregional awareness. The link connects to the archive of issues.
Raise the Stakes, The Planet Drum Review was the tabloid format periodical that Planet Drum published from 1979 until 2000. A wide range of authors/thinkers were published in the 30 issues of the Review which also included reports from grassroots bioregional and indigenous activists. Click the link to see the archive of issues to read online or download. “…the periodical “Raise the Stakes” was of immeasurable importance in defining and disseminating the ideas and possibilities of bioregionalism.” —Gary Snyder
More Downloadable Publications: Planet Drum and the Eco- Ecuador Project produced a number of educational pamphlets and flyers in Spanish and English discussing revegetation, composting and bioregional education & philosophy.
Index of Writings
(note: unattributed articles are by Peter Berg.)
- Complete index of David Simpson’s reports from United Nations climate change conferences. David Simpson is a long-time Northern California bioregional pioneer and community leader. He and Jane Lapiner participated in numerous COPs; Planet Drum distributed their impressions and archives them here.
Essays
Amble Toward Continent Congress was a manifesto to overcome the politics of extinction, the Earth-colonist globalism which exhausts whole continents, their people, and moves now to devastate deep floors of our planetary oceans. This piece was distributed as part of the Continent Congress Planet Drum Bundles, and was written to counter the patriotic fervor of the US Bicentennial in 1976. It was updated and reprinted as a “surprise publication” for Planet Drum Members in 1992, and served as a bioregional overview of North American history leading up to the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the Western Hemisphere. The updated 1992 poster version of Amble is available in the store.
Bioregion and Human Location was a talk that Peter gave at the University of North Carolina in 1982 (published originally in All Area #2, Spring 1983). It lays out the argument that “there has to be a new politics based on reincorporating the social and natural sciences together in a way that is appropriate for developing a planetarian civilization.”
The Bioregional Approach for Making Sustainable Cities. This article discusses sustainable cities’ foundation in ecology and includes a guide for starting the transition to achieve bioregional sustainability in any city. There is a section with examples from Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador.
Bioregionalism Meets Local Autonomy in Mexico reports on the November 1996 Turtle Island Bioregional Gathering (TIBG) in Tepoztlán, Mexico.
The Dispatches page links to articles and communications that Peter has sent from various trips to other bioregions around the planet. They include Ecuador, Japan, Asia, and the Northeast of the U.S.
Green City as Thriving City by David Morris was originally published in Raise The Stakes #13, Winter 1988. This article discusses price versus cost in the global economy and the advantages of local self-reliance.
I Am Looking at A Picture of Home is Raymond F. Dasmann’s essay about experiencing Northern California, originally written to accompany Arthur Okamura’s map for the book Reinhabiting a Separate Country. Complete and unedited. Note: An edited version of this essay with Okamura’s map is available in Planet Drum’s store.
Learning to Partner with a Life-Place is the outline of a first year bioregional curriculum. It was first published as Dispatch #1 from Ecuador, 2004.
Metamorphosis for Cities is an article by Peter from 1995 that outlined the blueprint for transforming urban areas to bring them into “balanced reciprocity with natural systems.” Subsequent work by Planet Drum Foundation in cooperation with the Eco City movement in Ecuador can be seen in the vision this article described.
The Northeast Tour, 2005 Dispatch is a poem, Hudson Loan.
The Post-Environmentalist Directions of Bioregionalism, a lecture by Peter Berg given at the University of Montana, Missoula, April 10, 2001.
Tributes
Meeting Thomas Berry, Biospherean was written in 2008 to go into a “book of appreciations” celebrating Berry’s 93rd birthday.
Murray Bookchin was one of the most influential thinkers in the formation of the anarcho bioregional movement. Peter Berg’s homage to this most inscrutable luminary, August 2006.
Peter Berg’s tribute to Raymond F. Dasmann, who died in Santa Cruz, California on November, 2003.
On January 24, 2001 a memorial for Gregory Corso was held at the New College in San Francisco. Peter Berg sent Standing on a Street Corner Doing Nothing is Power as a Dispatch from Ecuador for that occasion, and it was read at the memorial by Judy Goldhaft .
Nanao Sekaki, internationally renowned as a contemporary Taoist sage/poet, departed to become another part of the wide Universe on the Winter Solstice December 23, 2008. Peter Berg prepared this page for him.
Resources Elsewhere on the Internet
Key Characteristics of Bioregional Management, an article at the World Resources Institute.
Los Angeles a History of the Future by Paul Glover originally appeared in Raise the Stakes #6, Winter 1983. It is also available on these websites: Book form and with some Spanish translation.
North American Bioregional Congress & NABC Report by David Haenke, 1983.
15 Green Cities by Grist online magazine (July 19, 2007)